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For the past 20 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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This website includes selected articles from this week's edition of the Filipino Express. Not all the stories published in the printed version appear on this site.
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SEATTLE, Washington -- The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has deported 60 Filipino nationals this month, even as it arrested 179 illegal immigrants in Las Vegas, many of whom have outstanding orders of deportation.
The majority of the aliens arrested during the Las Vegas area operation are Mexican nationals, but the group also included immigration violators from seven other nations - the Philippines, Iraq, Egypt, Peru, Samoa, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Since many of these individuals have already been through immigration proceedings, they are subject to immediate removal from the country.
The deportation of 60 Filipinos this month was reported by ABS-CBN News on Wednesday, May 31.
ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said 48 Filipinos left Seattle on board a US Marshals special flight. The flight went to Hawaii and picked up 12 more Filipino deportees.
Kice said the deportees were from various areas in the US. She did not elaborate.
Last year the agency deported 280 Filipinos.
Meanwhile, the Coalition of Filipinos Overseas said about 350,000 undocumented Filipinos live in the US though other figures place the number at one million.
The arrest of 179 immigration violators was a result of a major six-day operation, by agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from three states.
As a result, more than 130 of the aliens taken into custody have already been removed from the United States.
The arrests are part of ICE’s national fugitive operations initiative, an enforcement strategy targeting illegal aliens who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge and failed to comply with those orders.
It is estimated there are more than 500,000 such fugitive aliens currently in the United States.
“Taking immigration fugitives off of our streets is a top ICE priority,” said John Torres, the national director of ICE detention and removal operations. “The people targeted in this operation had ‘their day in court,’ and were ordered deported by an immigration judge. Those immigration fugitives who remain at large should be on notice - the days when you could brazenly ignore an immigration judge’s order are over. We are going to find you and send you home.”
Several of those taken into custody during this week’s operation have criminal records, including past convictions for drug violations, assault, and weapons charges.
ICE fugitive operations teams from Los Angeles and Phoenix traveled to Las Vegas to work in concert with local ICE officers on the enforcement effort. ICE also received substantial assistance in the operation from the Nevada Department of Public Safety Parole and Probation Division.
From October 2005 to April 2006, ICE fugitive operations teams nationwide have made more than 12,000 arrests, including nearly 6,000 criminal aliens. Of the aliens arrested, more than 6,800 have been removed from the United States. The four fugitive operations teams responsible for covering the Los Angeles area and Las Vegas have made more than 2,000 arrests during that same time frame.
The fugitive operations initiative is an integral part of the second phase of the Secure Border Initiative (SBI), a comprehensive multi-year plan launched by the Department of Homeland Security to secure America’s borders and reduce illegal migration.
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JERSEY CITY -- The Senate approval of a proposal to grant US visas right away to children of Filipino World War II veterans may be a way to correct the long years of injustice against the war vets, but it still wasn’t enough for most of them to forget the six decades of suffering and bitterness the neglect has caused them.
On Memorial Day, several Filipino veterans of the war in the Pacific gathered to honor 73 New Jersey-based World War ll Filipino American veterans who died from 1990 to 2006.
It was also an occasion for them to pour out their long pent-up sentiments of how the United States refused to recognized their rights and privileges despite the fact that they served the US Army during the last World War.
Gerardo Dinsay, 84, received his Purple Heart award in 2004, 62 years after the war had ended.
“It was so valuable to me. My sacrifice was finally recognized,” said Dinsay who attended the memorial service.
Dinsay immigrated to the U.S. in 1990, and became U.S. citizen, and since then he had written the U.S. military and the U.S. Veterans Affairs office to grant him a Purple Heart award. He wrote numerous letters to the U.S. government while he was still in the Philippines.
In 1942, a few months after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered military troops in the Philippines, a then a US colony, to join the US military and fight the Japanese forces.
But after Japan surrendered, the U.S. Congress passed a law denying benefits for Filipinos who served alongside with U.S. troops.
For 50 years, Dinsay was bitter; he received little money from the Philippines government. It was only in 1990, that he was allowed to immigrate to the U.S. with his wife. He then started to receive a $250 a month compensation for his war wounds from the U.S. government.
Since 1990, his petition for immigrant visas for his four children in the Philippines has been languishing at the U.S. Embassy in Manila.
Alfred Diaz, 89, vice president of Philippine American Veterans Organization-NJ (PAVO), said his group has been fighting for full recognition as U.S. military veterans.
Diaz urged legislators to pass the Equity Act bill authored by Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, that would grant pension to Filipino American veterans. He said even though President Bush allowed Filipino American veterans to have health care benefits in 2003, they must continue to lobby to be fully recognized.
“The only legacy that I want to leave is to get benefits for the Filipino veterans,” said Diaz.
Another veteran, Vicente Armando, 89, was a prisoner of war in Tarlac and marched with American troops during the Bataan Death March in 1942. “I got malaria and was almost killed by a Japanese soldier. I survived the war,” he said. “My greatest happiness is that my children know what I fought for.”
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MILWAUKEE — A Federal jury found a wealthy suburban Filipino couple guilty last Friday, May 26, of harboring a Filipino illegal immigrant and forcing her to work as their maid for 19 years.
Filipino domestic Irma Martinez testified during the eight-day trial that she felt like a prisoner in the home of Jefferson N. and Elnora Calimlim, who are legal residents of the United States but citizens of the Philippines.
The couple was found guilty of harboring an illegal immigrant for financial gain, conspiracy to harbor an illegal immigrant for financial gain, forced labor and attempted forced labor.
The Calimlims’ eldest son, 31-year-old Jefferson M., was also found guilty of harboring an illegal immigrant, one of three charges against him.
Martinez testified that she worked 16-hour days for minimal pay for the couple who are both physicians.
The Calimlims face prison, fines, deportation and forfeiture of their $1.2 million (P63.36 million) home when they are sentenced on Sept. 15. Their US-born son also faces prison and fines.
In closing arguments last Thursday in the US District Court in Milwaukee, prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that Martinez volunteered to work for five years as a live-in maid and nanny for the Calimlims and their three children.
But prosecutors said Martinez “lost the best years of her life” because she feared imprisonment and deportation if she left the family.
“The defendants stole 19 years of Irma Martinez’s life,” said Susan French, a prosecutor from the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C. “They stole 19 years of freedom.”
She said the couple benefited from Martinez’s cheap labor.
Calimlims’ lawyer Tom Brown told jurors the couple had plenty of money to hire an American worker. He said Elnora wanted a Filipino maid because she had one while growing up in the Philippines, and she wanted only to help a fellow Filipino.
Elnora testified that Martinez earned $150 (P7,932) a month for the first 10 years and $400 (P21,153) a month thereafter.
According to French, most of the money went to Martinez’s parents, who received about $18,000 (P951,894) over the next 19 years.
Martinez would have earned about $480,000 (P25.38 million) over that period had the Calimlims paid her a US minimum wage for her 16-hour days, a US Department of Labor witness testified.
In the past five years, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and United States Attorneys’ Offices have prosecuted a 480 human trafficking cases.
Human trafficking is defined as bringing in a person and holding him / her against his/her will.
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